Marketplace Responsibility Principles

Most investors establish the value of a business based on evaluating its long term cash flows. Increasingly these evaluations take into account those issues that stem from a company's behaviour in the marketplace. Whether it's to do with how a company deals with its customers, runs its supply chains, works with regulators, or recognises and acts on the wider impact of its products, getting it wrong can be an expensive business.

What are the Marketplace Responsibility Principles?

The Principles are a proactive framework for managing marketplace issues, including guidance on key marketplace relationships and behaviours. Developed by a  group of 10 global and UK companies, the aim of the principles is to set out what leadership companies in the field do and what management behaviours they employ that help them to do it.

The Principles have undergone a rigorous period of consultation with CEOs, marketing directors, CR practitioners, and the SRI and NGO community, and were officially launched at Business in the Community’s AGM in December 2006. They are as follows:

• Respect your customers
• Support vulnerable customers
• Seek potential customers within excluded groups
• Manage the impact of product or service
• Actively discourage product misuse
• Actively manage responsibility in your supply chain
• Treat suppliers as partners
• Work with the rule makers
• Have consistent standards

Why should you sign up to the Marketplace Responsibility Principles?

Email Aliya Hajee to sign up to the principles and commit to report on your marketplace issues publicly. You will be recognised as a leadership company committed to managing your marketplace issues.

Who has signed up so far?

• Alliance Boots
• Barclays
• Barratt Developments
• BT
• Cadburys
• Camelot
• Centrica
• Coca-Cola GB
• DSG International 
• HBOS
• ITV
• J Sainsbury
• KCOM
• Kingfisher
• KPMG
• Leo Burnett
• Premier Farnell
• Nestle
• Tata Consultancy Services
• Veolia Environmental Services
• Workspace Group